"How I Could Just Kill a Man"

Cypress Hill
(Ruffhouse/Columbia, 1991)

Along with Ice T's "New Jack Hustler," the Geto Boys' "Mind Playing Tricks on Me," and BDP's "Love's Gonna Get 'Cha," this defined the logical limits of gangsta rap in the first years of the decade, ending the story until Dr. Dre arrived to remystify its possibilities in a haze of blunt smoke and soft-focus cinematic clichés. Cypress Hill were blunted too, but their whining sound effects, sneering vocals, and insolent swagger focus attention like a gun waved in the air. The words then draw a line in the sand, right on the edge of a precipice.

-- Franklin Soults